The Boat

Alexandria II is a 2 year old Broadblue 385 catamaran. She is built to circumnavigate the world, so we think she should be capable of sailing around Britain.

She is nearly 40 feet long and with a beam of 20 feet, has a draught of 1.2m and a 19m mast. She is fast, extremely stable, surprisingly manoeuvrable and built to a very high standard. She points at 35 degrees off the wind, has a huge amount of space and comfort with two double cabins, one single cabin and two bunks, and a huge saloon and cockpit, with a shower room.

She has three principal sails, one of which is a very large gennaker which uses the extra forestay mounted on the bowsprit, and also has a very large spinnaker (20 metres tall and 8 metres wide with a griffin emblazoned on it). The spinnaker does not use a spinnaker pole, rather, two blocks which run from each bow which makes the handling of such a huge sail a dream. It also has a large and powerful snuffer to douse it in a hurry. The spinnaker adds speed to a passage in light airs but is not as efficient as the gennaker...though much more fun!

If the hulls are clean, Alexandria generally sails at around half the apparent speed of the wind, which is very efficient, and the highest sustained speed I have seen has been 13.75 knots.

Alexandria is a very safe boat and has four watertight crash compartments which are reckoned to make her virtually unsinkable. Broadblue say they have not lost a yacht yet. In addition to the rigidity of the hulls and high bridge deck clearance which stops slapping in big seas, one feels very protected sitting high above the waterline and defended against the elements. In the nasty North Sea part of the passage from Poland in 2012, it felt like I was in an aircraft carrier, which was extremely comforting!

In addition, Alexandria has AIS, AIS transmit, radar, an active radar enhancer, and two decent chartplotters. In fact, being a catamaran, she has almost two of everything...just in case. Her engines are Volvos which will comfortably push her along at around 8 knots, and she makes very little wake when passing small boats entering harbour.

Broadblue is a British catamaran company which makes small volumes of high quality vessels. The care they gave in ensuring the best specification during the build was as as impressive as their attentive after sales service.